Shift Your Thinking

Shift your thinking. 

I've just started a very intriguing book by Brian P. Morgan and Michael Lennington entitled, The 12 Week Year. Now I can't wait to learn more about the concept of dividing a traditional fifty-two week year into four twelve week years, but for now I want to talk about the idea of shifting your thinking. 

Morgan and Lennington state, " When you focus on changing your actions, you experience incremental improvements; however when your thinking shifts-everything changes."

This idea as they say "blew my mind," as I began to think through the ramifications of how life altering this could be. How many times have we attempted to change our habits, by changing our actions? Recently, I wrote about the cyclical nature of change, and how eventually we find ourselves relapsing. 

The reason being is that at our core we are still the same, and we can only change those habits for so long before they come creeping back. This is when we might find ourselves throwing up our hands, and saying forget it. 

About four years ago I made the decision to stop drinking Diet Coke. My thinking had shifted after reading and realizing that my short term memory was somewhat compromised by the artificial sweetener in the drink. I had reached the point where I was so tired of not being able to remember what I had just done two minutes ago, that I knew something had to change. 

Although, I drank at least one Diet Coke a day giving them up was almost effortless, and I haven't had one since. I wish I could say the same about some other food choices in my life. I've done a good job of establishing better habits, but my thinking hasn't really shifted enough to make eating healthy second nature. 

I rely more on self-discipline which over time will wane. My thinking now is that by shifting my thinking I might have better results. Of course, how to do that might be the next question? As much as I enjoy eating I must say that "food for thought" always motivates me toward personal growth. I look forward to reading more about this idea.